You cannot discover your natural pace while constantly matching someone else’s.

You have a natural rhythm of working, resting, talking, and being quiet, and it is almost impossible to detect while you are synchronised to somebody else’s. Matching is automatic and mostly unconscious, which means many people have never operated at their own tempo long enough to know what it is.

Give yourself several days with no one else setting the pace. Sleep and eat and work when it suits you. What emerges is worth knowing, both because it makes you more effective and because it lets you notice when you are running at a speed borrowed from someone else.